George Barnabas - 04 - Fourth Attempt Read Online Free PDF Page B

was horrified. ‘Hunnisett would surely never let that happen?’
    Zack looked at her and shook his head. ‘He’s not the man he was. Tired, to tell the truth. That’s why he’s announced his retirement. He could have gone on for a couple of years more if he’d pushed for it. But he’s — well, he’s a weary old man now. We’ll just have to fend for ourselves, I guess.’
    He seemed to realize that he was saying more than he meant to and smiled at her, and was at once his usual comfortable self. ‘But no need to worry. I have a few irons in the fire to get my money in. Here’s hoping the others do. Some of ’em need a hell of a lot of capital.’
    ‘Don’t you?’
    ‘Uh-huh. But I’ve got every chance of getting it. I told you, irons in the fire. Nothing like a cheerful cliché to make a point, hmm? Look, let’s get out of here and go for a drink somewhere, what do you say? This wine’s warmed up now and it’s getting very stuffy.’
    She hesitated. Hattie had drifted away from them now andthey couldn’t be overheard. She could easily accept and go out with him and no one would know, so there would be no gossip. But, dammit, this wasn’t a date he was asking for, just a drink. So she smiled at him and nodded.
    ‘Let me do a quick whirl round the room and talk to the Prof.,’ she said. ‘And have a word with my own staff who turned out, then I’ll be ready. Give me — what, twenty minutes? Will that be OK?’
    He looked at his watch. ‘You can have nineteen,’ he said.
    She bowed her head ironically. ‘Nineteen it is. See you by the main door?’
    ‘The main door it is.’ He laughed and she knew he was thinking just what she had: if they left the room together there might possibly be talk. It would be much safer to bump into each other accidentally downstairs on the way out.
    She went round the room as fast as she could, nodding at people and stopping for a few moments to ask after Kate Sayers’s brood of babies and to talk to Barbara Rosen, the crumpled and always rather grubby-looking psychiatrist for whom she had a particular affection; then she looked round for her own staff before making her final sortie towards the Professor and her way out.
    She saw Jerry and Alan Short talking in a corner and made her way through the chattering hubbub towards them. Jerry greeted her cheerfully. ‘What ho, Dr B.! Not poisoned by the vol-au-vents yet? I ought to run a salmonella check on them, only I don’t dare. We’d have to close the whole hospital down if we really knew how much death and disease lurked in ’em. Have you tasted one? I have and I’m not long for this life, I swear to you.’
    ‘More fool you for risking it,’ she said. She tried not to frown as she asked, ‘Where is everyone else?’
    Alan went scarlet. ‘Um, Jane wasn’t feeling too good,’ he muttered. ‘I told her I’d make her apologies.’
    ‘Oh, that’s all right,’ George said quickly. ‘I didn’t mean her. It was Sheila I wondered about. She left the lab earlyespecially to go home and change. Which shouldn’t have been necessary if she’d remembered to dress suitably this morning.’ Her current irritation with Sheila, who was indeed being more than usually captious, spilled over into her voice to sharpen it.
    Jerry all unwittingly fed the flames. ‘Oh, she always has to go home to change for these shindigs. You never know
who
you might meet,’ he said, in a fair imitation of Sheila’s rather high voice and pinched would-be upper-class accent.
    ‘Yeah, no doubt,’ George snapped. ‘All the same, she should be here. I told her I expected all the senior people to turn out. It doesn’t look good if the most senior technician cuts the Prof’s farewell do.’
    ‘She definitely said she was coming.’ Jerry now realized he’d put his foot in it and rushed to Sheila’s defence, though normally they sparred like a pair of bad-tempered puppies trapped in the same basket. ‘She knew it was a three-line